Blog post #4: Into the Wild, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the Psychological Approach.

In both Fantastic Mr. Fox and Into the Wild, main characters are driven to a more adventurous lifestyle by issues stemming from their families, more specifically: their fathers. While Ash is consistently looking for attention and approval from his father, Chris is avoiding his at all costs. Ash would practically do anything in a desperate attempt to gain his father's praise. Chris, however, does the opposite. His father will say one thing, and purposefully and knowingly, Chris will do another.

Ash feels like his father fails to recognize him. He tries to impress him on a consistent basis but he does not take notice. When his cousin, Kristofferson, arrives, the hypothetical distance between Ash and his father is greater. Ash feels resentful and jealous of Kristofferson because Mr. Fox praises him and takes more interest in his accomplishments than his own son. Ash feels inferior to Kristofferson because he seems to be good at everything he's not, or rather better than him. People pay more attention to him and like him. He seems to have all the qualities he desires to have. Ash is hurt when his dad will not let him go to steal chickens with him. Ash and his father's relationship gets increasingly strained but he never gives up on trying to gain his approval and have a father-son bond. This leads Ash to more adventure and he begins to be what his father claims they truly are, wild animals.

Chris McCandless is driven to his adventurous lifestyle by his strained relationship with his father. Though their relationship is strained in a different way than that of Ash and Mr. Fox's. Chris struggles with accepting his father's past and infidelity, which leads him to resent his father and completely detatch from him and the rest of his family. Chris would not accept critiquing of any form from his father, it only made him pull away more. "Chris had so much natural talent, but if you tried to coach him, polish his skill, to bring out that final ten percent, a wall went up. He resisted instruction of any kind." (111). Walt proceeds to tell us that Chris refused to listen to him. Chris knew the stress his adventures put on his parents and continued to let them feel that way. That just goes to show how much resentment he really had towards them.

Overall, Ash and Chris had contrasting family issues that lead them to their adventurous lifestyles, but are similar in the way that family is what drove them there. It was Chris's resentment for his father that fueled his adventurous spirit, and Ash's need for approval from his father to fuel his adventures.